The Pivotonians

Recent discussion on United States foreign policy has been focused on the idea of a ‘pivot’, i.e. the Obama Administration shifting Washington’s attention away from Europe and the Middle East and towards Asia (and ‘Asia’ in this context usually means ‘China’). This ‘pivot’ is usually presented as a Good Thing; apparently, the Middle East is doing just fine, Latin America and Africa don’t merit America’s attention, and China’s human rights record and imperialism in Africa pose no barriers to America working with it to solve whatever it is they’re supposed to be solving at these no-tie summits. An Australian scholar, Michael Fullilove, has a piece in the Los Angeles Times which serves as a good study of the mindset of the ‘pivot lobby’.

Opponents often mock neoconservative foreign policy thinkers for believing that ‘it’s always 1938 somewhere’. It’s not just the neocons, however. For anyone with an idea of what American should do and to whom it should do it, the isolationist political climate of the 1930s is always a convenient punching bag.

Fullilove wants Obama to follow in the footsteps of – guess who – FDR, who undertook “the last successful pivot” between the start of World War II and Pearl Harbor. We’ve heard this story a million times: Dieselpunk-era America was rejecting multilateralism, restricting immigration, and building tariff barriers until ‘That Man’ led the nation into a glorious future of peace, security, and progress. Fullilove’s unique take on this narrative is to focus on the work of Roosevelt’s confidants and advisors, but it still combines the Great Man Theory of history with the Green Lantern Theory of the presidency.

The first thing I took issue with in the piece is the idea that isolationism was defeated through FDR’s speechmaking, powers of persuasion, and “subtle diplomacy”. But the story of America in 1939-1941 can’t be told without mentioning the Brown Scare, a smear campaign which ruined more careers and reputations than that of Joe McCarthy. It also ignores domestic political considerations: Roosevelt’s hawkishness and anglophilia lost him votes among German-Americans and Irish-Americans, but those losses were offset by increased support among newer ethnic groups such as Jews, Poles, Czechs, and Serbs, who were registering and voting in greater numbers. Isolationism didn’t lose the battle of ideas – even before Pearl Harbor it was hounded out of the public sphere and its demographic base declined in importance.

What does this have to do with Obama and Asia? Fullilove wants to make an analogy between FDR’s ‘pivot’ and Obama’s tilt towards Asia. But he ends by reminding us that China’s rise “is in no way analogous to the rise of the Axis regimes”. Of course it isn’t: FDR made war against Germany and Japan; today’s Western leaders want to appease China. Raising the spectre of 1939 and 1941 is a rhetorical trick designed to equate opponents of China with Charles Lindbergh.

The regime in Beijing kills dissidents, uses state power to prevent its workers from organising, employs smokestack-chasing economic policies to steal industry from the West, marginalises its racial and ethnic minorities, and is presently trying to outdo Cecil Rhodes and King Leopold II in its efforts to turn Africa into one giant raubwirtschaft. Let’s save the pivoting until after there’s been some regime change in Beijing.